Water board OKs unusual resolution

March 3, 2004

By Jack King

City officials call it a “unique and strange agreement,” but a resolution approved Wednesday by Clovis’ water policy advisory board may allow Curry County to join other area entities in encouraging water conservation.
The resolution is a compromise aimed at protecting agricultural users from overregulation, said County Attorney Stephen Doerr.
The Clovis City Commission has adopted a drought management plan, with water conservation measures, but when city water policy advisory board Chairman Randy Crowder asked the County Commission to sign a resolution supporting conservation on Feb. 13, some balked.
District 4 Commissioner Albin Smith, a dairy farmer who lives in the county, said some parts of the resolution seemed too open-ended for his taste.
Crowder said county commissioners told him they did not want to leave anything in the resolution that could later be construed as endorsing more extreme conservation measures than were listed in its text.
Wednesday’s resolution deletes the County Commission from the list of governmental agencies in the document’s first paragraph and from the “Be it resolved” paragraph at the end, the main point of a resolution.
Crowder told water board members City Attorney Dave Richards called the document a “unique and strange resolution.”
“But he said we’re basically trying to encourage a policy,” Crowder added, explaining that Richards meant the language could be softened to obtain unified support among area entities.
Doerr said Tuesday the county’s name was eliminated as a compromise.
“We support it. We agree with it. We don’t have any problem with the resolution as it is written. But we wanted to make it clear the program wasn’t aimed at agricultural use,” he said.
City Manager Raymond Mondragon said the compromise resolution will be on the City Commission’s March 25 agenda, to give County Commissioner time to discuss it at their March 16 meeting.